Mark Perry, Arvid Engström and Oskar Juhlin' s paper "Amateur Vision and Recreational Orientation: creating live video together" will be awarded Best Paper this year at CSCW 2012. In total, CSCW 2012 recieved a total of 415 paper and note submissions with 4 papers receiving the "Best" paper designation.

KTH arranged TedX at Ericsson showroom in Kista this year. Kristina Höök talked about Internet of Things. Listen to the talk.

Från samtal till sms, från e-post till appar. Nästa steg är känslostyrd kommunikation. Hur smart kan en mobiltelefon bli? The Mobile Life centre in article in DN about mobile phones and feelings.

Nya forskningsmedel från både SSF och Vetenskapsrådet, de positiva beskeden till SICS-forskaren och Stockholms universitets-professorn Kristina Höök ramlar in på rad. –Med grundfinansiering för fem år kan jag lyfta blicken och göra den forskning jag vill göra, säger hon.  

Read more in article by RI.SE.

Hon ska lära mobilen visa känslor.

Mobile Life demoed again this year at the annual event Mobile Future organised by the magazin Mobil. Demoes from Mobile Life were IMPACT, Jordi Solsona, the Affective Health system, Johanna Mercuri, Outfit centric accessories by Morvarid Kashanipour, Fascinate, Allan Svensson and EcoFriends demoed by Carolina Johansson.

Photo: Jannecke Schulmann

Katja Grufberg and Lars Erik Holmquist won the Best Short Paper award at DESIRE 2011 in the Netherlands recently:

"The award for best short paper went to Katja Grufberg and Lars Holmquist, for their paper: Magical Bits: Designing Through Experiencing the Future End Product"

The price was announced Thursday night at the annual "Mobilgalan" in Kista Science Tower.

STIMDI has decided to award the 2011 Grand Prize to Kia Höök for the following reasons:

Kia Höök won the price because she combines a very distinguished academic career in human-computer interaction through developing and spreading knowledge and awareness of the importance of interaction, especially in mobile applications, e.g. through the Mobile Life Centre. Congratulations to Kia!

Kristina Höök, professor vid Institutionen för data- och systemvetenskap och forskningsledare på forskningsinstitutet SICS, får 10 miljoner kronor i anslag från Stiftelsen för Strategisk Forskning som en fortsättning på hennes tidigare anslag inom programmet Framgångsrika forskningsledare. Hon får anslaget för forskning kring känslor och interaktion mellan människa och maskin. Kristina Höök får även ett anslag från Vetenskapsrådet för denna forskning. Läs mer 

”Att seriöst syssla med det oseriösa”
Så beskriver Oskar Juhlin sin forskning. Oskar Juhlin är nybliven professor i data- och systemvetenskap vid DSV med inriktning mot design av nya mobila medier. Han bedriver sin forskning inom Mobile Life Centre, där han för närvarande är föreståndare. För länge sen utbildade han sig som civilingenjör inom väg och vatten, men ändrade bana drastiskt och  disputerade inom kunskapssociologi. Han älskar att forska och  att kombinera sitt teknikintresse med ett samhällsperspektiv med ett särskilt fokus på konsumenters behov av förströelse.
Oskar Juhlin är född och uppvuxen i Norrbotten. Efter utbildningen till civilingenjör inom väg och vatten var han less på teknik och började studera idéhistoria och filosofi på Stockholms universitet. Det blev så småningom Tema T på Linköpings universitet där  teknikintresset väcktes på nytt. Han disputerade inom kunskapssociologi med ett speciellt fokus på de ingenjörer som arbetade med att utveckla ITS (Intelligenta Transport system). Under avhandlingsarbetet hade han kontakt med Vägverket som sedan finansierade en en postdoc-tjänst på valfri plats. Han valde centrum för tvärvetenskap vid Göteborgs Universitet, men jobbade samtidigt också på det nyligen startade Viktoriainstitutet  i Göteborg.
– Det var ett lyft att komma in i IT-forskningen, utbrister Oskar Juhlin!! Det är framförallt två saker som inspirerade mig – det kreativa skapandet och den speciella typ av samhällsvetenskaplig forskning, med fokus på detaljeradeempiriska studier av människors liv, som är så uppskattat i detta område.
Oskar Juhlin har blivit kvar i forskarvärlden allt sedan dess. Han har ett stort intresse för forskning och glad över att den möjligheten finns. Han tycker forskning passar hans läggning.

– Jag är lite krävande och ”illrig”,  säger Oskar med ett skratt. Man kanske skulle kunna säga att jag överintresserad. Det var fantastiskt att hitta den här platsen för mig, och redan när jag började doktorera kände jag att nästan alla var som jag.
Mobility studion
2000 började han att bygga upp sin egen forskningsgrupp – Mobility Studio – på Interaktiva Institutet. Det första anslaget för den fem-sex personer starka gruppen kom från SITI, och gruppen har varit externfinansierad sedan dess. Numera ingår tio forskare i gruppen som är en integrerad del av Mobile Life Centre. Här finns forskare både från Stockholms universitet och Interaktiva institutet.
– Vi har ett tydligt användarorienterat perspektiv i vår forskning, betonar Oskar Juhlin. Det är ju människorna och deras behov som avgör. Folk vill ha roligt, de söker det goda livet och underhållning. Och det ska vår forskning bidra till.
I början av 2000-talet så sammanfördes Oskar Juhlin med Kia Höök och Lars-Erik Holmquist av professor Bo Dahlbom, IT-universitetet i Göteborg. Det här blev början till det som idag är Mobile Life Centre.
– Vi ville bedriva idéforskning som kanske inte är så teoretisk, förklarar Oskar Juhlin. Det handlar om att utveckla teknik som är användarnära. Vad folk håller på med och hur de gör har alltid intresserat mig nämligen.
Trion sökte och fick pengar från SSF för sin forskning, och så småningom började man kalla sin gemensamma verksamhet för Mobile Life. Och 2006 kröntes samarbetet med framgången då man utsågs till ett s k Vinnexcellence center. Oskar Juhlin är för närvarande föreståndare för centret som samlar forskare från många olika discipliner. Centret samarbetar med ledande teknikföretag för att förutse hur framtidens mobila teknik kommer att se ut, genom att redan nu uppfinna morgondagens produkter.
– Jag tycker att det är helt fantastiskt att få vara forskare inom IT. Vi gillar alla teknik, berättar Oskar. Men jag är den som mest bidrar med det samhällsvetenskapliga perspektivet.
Mobile Life centret sätter fokus på användarna och kan ge företagen strategiska kunskaper om det mobila livet. Centret ska bidra till den konkreta tekniköverföringen. Centret ha blivit ett av Europas två ledande centra inom det mobila området.
Just nu jobbar Oskar Julin med en bok tillsammans med Barry Brown, gästprofessor vid Mobile Life. Den är tänkt att bli handbok – ett metodprogram – för samhällsvetenskapliga forskare som vill ägna sig åt området med teknik i underhållande syfte. Och han ser fram emot att få lämna  över ledarskapet för Mobile Life till Annika Waern – då kan hans egen forskning få mer utrymme.
– Jag har ett ansvar för att vi ska bidra till samhällsförändring. Jag har bidragit med ett samhällsperspektiv på vår verksamhet, understryker Oskar Juhlin.
Nya utmaningar
En hjärtefråga för Oskar Juhlin är att verka för att Europa tar en ledande roll inom kommersialiseringen av tillämpningar inom det som kallas Internet of Things. Här behövs en kraftsamling kring konsumentorientering och nya behov.
– Vi är bra på teknik i Europa, men är vi beredda att ta den här bollen? Europa skulle kunna bli ledande, men tecknen är inte så lovande, menar Oskar.
Det finns dock positiva exempel – enligt Oskar är Nokia är en god förebild i Europa. De är verkligen intresserade och är öppna och kreativa med ett starkt fokus på konsumentbehov, även om de just nu genomgår en krävande period. Det finns också många spännande nya svenska företag inom underhållningssektorn.
Det tidigare så framångsrika svenska innovationssystemet är flaskhalsen. Oskar menar att det är olyckligt att staten i nuläget är tänkt att vara både är beställare och första köpare – det gynnar bara befintliga verksamheter som utgår från parlamentariskt formulerade ”problem”. I dessa sammanhang fokuserar man mer på miljöfrågor än på människors behov av förströelse.
– I det statliga intresserar man sig inte för ”tristessen” som ett gemensamt problem. Stress ser vi som ett problem värdigt politiska diskussioner där vi eventuellt har ett gemensamt ansvar. Men tristess ses både som privat och irrelevant. Egentligen borde jag starta det svenska Tristessforskningsinstitutet, avslutar Oskar Juhlin med ett skratt.

Kristina Höök vill få mobiler att förmedla känslor. Nu får hon 10 miljoner kronor för att få mobilen att hoppa av glädje. Läs mer

Kristina Höök, professor at Stockholm University, has obtained a research grant from the Swedish Research Council of 2.4 MSEK in addition to the recently earned grant of 10 MSEK from SSF. The proposal is named "Designing for experience: body, emotion, sociality and empathy".

Kristina Höök writes in her proposal:

We see a highly connected future, where billions of devices in our daily lives will be connected – forming an Internet of Things (IoT). It is of key importance that we can create technology and design applications that address deeply human ways of living in this IoT-world: addressing body, emotion, sociality and empathy. To achieve this we need:

·       example applications that encourage deeply meaningful, human-centered ways of communicating with ourselves and others, involving our bodies, movements, bio-data, emotions, sociality, empathy in a non-dualistic whole

·       explorations of novel interaction modalities that leverage on the possibilities offered by the shift towards Internet of Things technology, sensors, actuators and connected devices, and capitalize on the massive amount of data that IoT-applications may produce

·       human-centered design methods and tools making it possible to articulate experiences and rapidly design, implement, and evaluate human-centric IoT systems, without requiring the typical lengthy sketch-design-specify-implement cycle, respecting and cultivating deep knowledge of the emerging IoT technology materials

My research group has a unique interdisciplinary, design-driven research approach to this area. Our focus on a non-dualistic, empowerment perspective has rendered unique, commercially interesting applications in the research forefront.

Kristina Höök, forskningsledare på SICS & Mobile Life vid SU, har beviljats 10 milj kr i fortsatta anslag från Stiftelsen för Strategisk forskning. Kristina Höök får anslaget för sin forskning kring känslor och interaktion mellan människa och maskin, en viktig del i SICS satsning på Internet of Things.

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Kristina Höök, forskningsledare på SICS och professor på Stockholms universitet har beviljats 10 milj kr  i fortsatta anslag från Stiftelsen för Strategisk Forskning för sin forskning i upplevelsebaserad design. Kristina Hööks forskning på SICS har sedan 2004 förstärkts med dessa sk Ingvar-pengar (efter Ingvar Carlsson, ordförande i SSF) och får nu en generös fortsättning i stark konkurrens med andra tidigare Ingvar-stipendiater.

Kristina Höök är jublande glad över anslaget som hon menar verkligen ger hennes forskningsgrupp chansen att utvecklas och nå betydelsefulla resultat.

- De första sex åren med ”Ingvar” är de bästa forskningsår jag haft, säger hon. Det var en fantastisk bekräftelse och ett bevis att det var värt allt slit. Att nu få fortsätta betyder att vi har resurser att ytterligare bygga upp ett viktigt forskningsområde.

Anslaget delas ut personligen till särskilt framgångsrika forskningsledare och kan disponeras relativt fritt. Kristina Höök får anslaget för sin forskning kring känslor och interaktion mellan människa och maskin, som framgent kommer att ingå i SICS stora satsning på Internet of Things. Internet of Things innebär att massor av data strömmar från människor och intelligensförsedda  föremål  i vår omgivning och samlas på Internet. Ur datamängderna kan mönster kan utläsas och matas tillbaka till oss i form av insikter som vi kan ha glädje och nytta av.

SICS har på senare år gjort flera tekniska genombrott inom Internet of Things. Vi har nu den teknik tillgänglig som behövs för att bygga lösningar som involverar kroppen och människors känslor. Det handlar om sensorsystem, som fångar upp vad vi känner, och sk aktuatorer, dvs små system som översätter ett emotionellt, kroppsligt uttryck till något som en maskin kan uttrycka, t ex vibrationer eller temperaturväxlingar. Hööks forskning rör den delen som involverar människan och hennes forskning fokuserar alltmer på kroppslighet eftersom ”kroppen och jaget är ett”.

- Det finns, säger Kristina, en risk att vi betraktar människan som en mekanisk docka, när vi kommer från teknikhållet. Men vi vill göra tekniska lösningar som främjar det nära, innerliga och meningsfulla i människors liv, sådant som ökar vår livsglädje och empati med andra och oss själva.

I motiveringen från SSF står bl a: ”Kristina Höök har byggt upp ett excellent nätverk både akademiskt och med representanter för industri och samhälle. Forskningsgruppen har starka band med den svenska IT-industrin, för vilka den föreslagna forskningen bör ha stor betydelse... Projektet har potential att utveckla en ny generation interaktionsmönster som kan hjälpa svenska företag att konkurrera på den globala IT-marknaden.”

Kristina Höök har framgångsrikt byggt upp forskningscentret Mobile Life på Stockholms Universitet, i samarbete med SICS och Interactive Institute. Hon leder också forskningslaboratoriet Interaction Design and Innovation på SICS och har en ledande roll i satsningen på Internet of Things på SICS.

Läs mera:
Mobile Life 
Interaction Design and Innovation
Involve-gruppen i Mobile Life

Foto: Joel Höglund

In June, Oskar Juhlin was invited by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft to give a presentation about the Swedish innovaiton system and in particular about the VINN Excellence Centre. The event was followed by an article. Read the article on page 32.

Friday October 7th, Marie Denward successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis at Malmö Högskola. The thesis called "Pretend that it is Real! Convergence Culture in Practice"  is an in-depth study of the cross-medial alternate reality game 'The Truth About Marika'. Congratulations Marie!

Abstract: "Media convergence has mainly been defined and explained as a technological and industrial phenomenon; as the process where new technologies are accommodated by existing media and communication industries and their cultures of production. One consequence of convergence in today’s hybrid media landscape is that the previously distinct borders between production and consumption have become blurred. This means that convergence also takes place as a bottom-up social process initiated by media users that move almost anywhere and everywhere in search of entertainment experiences of their liking. This thesis sheds light on the different types of media convergence that took place in the process of making the transmedia storytelling production Sanningen om Marika. The Swedish public service provider, SVT, and the pervasive games upstart company, The company P, combined their expertise in broadcasting and games development to craft this ‘participation drama’.

During five months in 2007, the production offered Swedes nationwide rich possibilities to interact and participate, or just to watch or lurk on the production’s various platforms. Using an ethnographic approach, field studies were conducted throughout the design, implementation and production phases. The analysis shows that even if instances of convergence could be identified, the collaboration did not proceed smoothly. The companies’ different media logics with their differing cultures of production created tensions and frictions. The different logics of television, internet and games - different in quality demands and with different audience participation models - made it difficult to create a hybrid production. Television genres blurred fiction and facts, and the ordinary was blurred with activities of games and play in the production, making the audience reception and interpretations differ extensively. Lastly, the designed audience participation did not remove the asymmetrical relationship between producers and users in media, but instead highlighted issues of hierarchies, lack of participant empowerment and inequality between participants."

Kristina Höök presented the progress in the commercialisation process of the Affective Health system at SSF (Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research). The pre studie has convinced her and the business developer, Fredrik Wetterhall, that this will be a successful product on the market. Read the article: (in Swedish).

Oskar Juhlin in an video interview by Stockholm IT region. He talks about the trends in mobile devices, ther purpose and strength of the Mobile Life Centre, and why choosing Stockholm for an international conference on mobile devices. 

The Mobile HCI conference in Stockholm attracted 400 participants this year. The conference was organised by the Mobile Life Centre together with the support of SICS. Our sponsors played an important role in making the conference a success and we would escpecially like to mention the City of Stockholm that hosted the conference reception in the Golden hall. We would also like to thank Ericsson, Nokia and Kista Science City for their support.

The mobile technology can be used in so many ways to help us work faster. The technology is our friend, we decide how over its development, explains Kristina Höök in the interview. The article says that it is Kristina Höök's combination of humanism and technical optimism that are mirrored in the six design concept that she is trying to make useful. In the magazin Tele 2 Business  DSV web.

Oskar Juhlin was invited by the German Stifterverband and the British Embassy in Berlin to do a presentation at their joint conference on Enterprising Knowledge: Oskar shared the experience from the Mobile Life VINN Excellence Centre of working in close collaboration with industry. Companies at the conference were for example Phillips,  Volkswagen and Procter & Gamble.

Interview with Oskar from the conference

Show you emotions in the you mobile phone. Article with Petra Sundström in Ingenjörsamfundets magazin.

Match your mobile phone with your dress! Article in VINNOVA nytt about the Mobile Life project, mFashion. Read more (see page 15 - Article in Swedish). 

About Mobile Life in VINNOVA nytt, p 8. Read more. (Article in Swedish).

Article about Affective Health in the Internet journal "It i vården" (in Swedish). 

Oskar Juhlin was interviewed for the journal Oracle in connection with his book release, "Social Media on the Road!". Read the article.

The Mobile Life Centre played an important role at SICS Open House on May 5. Among the introductory speakers were the Mobile Life centre board chair, Martin Körling, Director Service Layer Technology, Ericsson and Professor Kristina Höök. At the exhibition, a number of research projects from the Mobile Life Centre were demonstrated.

Martin Körling explained Ericsson’s focus on what the next thing will be after Face book and other social media. We will see more services diffused into our lives, and he is convinced that the network will become even more important. Ericsson Labs is a platform that works with openness and innovation as distinctive features. Ericsson Labs is a way to get feedback from researchers. Ericsson Application Award is another way to encourage and reward contributions from researchers. In order to create what lies beyond smart phones you have to encourage third-party suppliers. Ericsson also focuses on what the consumers want from the Internet of Things and how all the devices and things are going to communicate with each other in the future.

Professor Kristina Höök enumerated a number of applications and services we are surrounded with today. Kristina says that we are already living in the world of Internet of things – but we are not always thinking about it. We use different services from our mobile phones or other units for fun, wellness, games and much more. She also gave details for a few projects – two of which are in the semi-finals of the Ericsson Application Awards. She predicts exciting future research projects analysing the enormous amount of data created by people using these new services. This could be a perfect task for interdisciplinary research at SICS.

We welcome Bambuser as a new partner in the Mobile Life Centre. Bambuser is an interactive mobile video streaming platform, enabling users to quickly and easily stream and share live mobile video with all of their favorite social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and many more, through seamless integration. Used by both professional broadcasters and consumers worldwide, Bambuser is the easiest and most dynamic video streaming solution available WiFi mobile devices, webcams and DV-cameras. Featuring mobile and browser based live broadcasting, one click social sharing, platform agnostic chat, geo-location tagging and integrated web storage, Bambuser is the smart mobile video solution. Bambuser is currently available for iPhoneOS, Symbian, Android, Nokia Maemo, Symbian, and Windows Mobile platforms, supporting over 200 different mobile devices worldwide. Bambuser enables anyone to quickly and easily harness the power of live social video. For more information visit www.bambuser.com.

Mobile Life has not one but TWO apps in the semi-finals of the Ericsson Application Awards - one in the student category and one in the company category!
Both our submissions are based on recent work on mobile image recognition in the Mobile 2.0 project.
They are:
- MobileArt - a system for getting information about the art in the subway by snapping a picture!
- Pic-In - lets you determine your location and check in to FourSquare by - you guessed it - snapping a picture!

Big congratulations to Tengjiao, Sebastian and everyone else who worked on these apps!

Commercialisation Grant to Professor Kristina Höök

Affective Health is a lifestyle-related mobile service developed by Professor Kristina Höök at the Mobile Life VINN Excellence Centre. The service has received funding of 0.5 MSEK for commercialisation from the SSF and VINNOVA pilot program Verification of Research. The service is developed to help people to better understand how they can cope with stress.

The idea of the pilot program is to promote commercialisation of research results, and give participants a deeper knowledge of the commercialisation process. Affective Health is one of the three projects that received the verifying grant in April 2011.

Take the pulse of your stress level

Affective Health is a mobile service developed by Kristina Höök at the Mobile Life Centre, Stockholm Univerity/DSV. It is a lifestyle-related service that will help people better recognize their bodily reactions to stress.

Stress is a major problem in the western world and the emerging middle classes in developing countries. Only in Sweden the estimated cost is € 1,7 billion per year. It is in the group of working professionals, aged 28-45 years who shows the highest levels of stress and the service is directed primarily towards this group.

- Affective Health allows users to follow and understand their physical reactions in the everyday life in real time (biofeedback) and over time, explains Kristina Höök. In order to make everything work, the mobile phone and the app is supplemented with biosensors on the body. The sensors register the physiological response to stressful situations as well as for the more calm periods.

The mobility and the feedback from the system facilitates a greater self-knowledge, and thus becomes a source of greater self-awareness says Kristina Höök, who also mentions the elaborated and pedagogical interface.

Affective Health was developed a few years ago as part of a research project in the Mobile Life Centre. The researchers had planned to continue with the research and leave the work with the mobile service. The system almost ended up in a drawer. There were, however, so many requests for access to the service from people who have seen it, so it felt appropriate to commercialise Affective Health.

- The journey to commercialisation is much more fun and more exciting than I thought, emphasizes Kristina Höök. I am a scientist at heart, but also a commercialisation process is an exploration of people and the tools they want to surround themselves with. I learn a lot about how the world works. 

It was in the corner of 56:th and Lexington in New York that the first phonecall with a handheld device was made on April 3rd, 38 years ago. The phone weighed 1 kg and the battery time was 20 minutes. In an interview at the TV 4 broad casting "Nyhetsmorgon", Oskar Juhlin comments on some of the high lights for mobile phones during the 38 years that has past, and on future challenges for the mobile phone. See the broad cast here (in Swedish)

It was in the corner of 56:th and Lexington in New York that the first phonecall with a handheld device was made on April 3rd, 38 years ago. The phone weighed 1 kg and the battery could be used for 20 minutes. In an interview at the TV 4 broad casting "Nyhetsmorgon", Oskar Juhlin comments on some of the high lights for mobile phones during the 38 years that has past, and on future challenges for the mobile phone. See the broad cast here (in Swedish). 

Vinnova nyttt vistited the centre in the beginning of the year which resulted in a portrait of Kristina Höök. Read the article here. (In Swedish). 

Annika discusses how companies use social media and games in their marketing communication as a means to reach and interact with customers. Read the article (in Swedish). March 2011.

Mobile Life Centre is presented in the March - April issue 2011, of the journal Interacions. The centre of Mobile Applications for Fun and Pleasure. Read the article here. 

The Swedish government has set up a "Digitalization Council". The group is formed on initiative by the IT and Regional Minister Anna-Karin Hatt and will have an advisory role in matters relating to the digitization of Sweden.

One of the 27 members is Professor Kristina Höök, DSV and Mobile Life Centre. Digitalization Council has both an advisory role and will be a forum for strategic discussion between the government and representatives of different social sectors, both private and public. Initially, the design of the national IT strategy, A Digital Agenda for Sweden, will be the focus of the work. It is important that A Digital Agenda for Sweden becomes an agenda for Sweden and not just the government. In this perspective, the Digitization Council's task is even more important, both in regards to the design and realization, Anna-Karin Hatt said in a statement. IT should be fun, creative, and give users a voice.

Professor Kristina Höök is a researcher in human-machine interaction at Stockholm University and the Mobile Life Centre. She is obviously very happy about the appointment. But she also stresses that not everything will be about IT to create efficiency - she wants to enter a user perspective where it is all about creativity and emotion. It will be really exciting to be involved in shaping the digital agenda for Sweden, says Kristina Höök. I note that right now all goals are about solving problems or improve efficiency within authorities, schools, health care and infrastructure. No goal is about having fun, enjoy, be creative, increase your own presence and voice in this IT world. I think that is a mistake. IT displace the power of old associations in interesting ways. In healthcare, patients are a completely different voice and power - they can look for information, but also support each other. In schools, students can not only provide a more effective teaching - they can be creative and create their own games, blogs, apps, websites, video productions and everything else that the digital material allows. We need to emphasize innovation and creativity much more in the Swedish digital agenda.

The Mobile Life Centre is featured in the latest issue of the journal Interactions, March-April 2011: "Day in the lab" - Mobile Life Centre: Mobile Applications for Fun and Pleasure. The article is added here. (Photo: Karl-Petter Åkesson)

Maria Håkansson has received a personal grant from the Hans Werthén Foundation at the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences to conduct postdoctoral studies in the Culturally Embedded Computing group, lead by Phoebe Sengers, at Cornell University, USA. The Hans Werthén Foundation supports young researchers who wants to do research abroad in areas that are relevant for Swedish industry and academia. The overall aim of Maria's funded project is to explore how ICT can support families in making their everyday lives more sustainable. Environmental sustainability is an increasingly important issue that affects people and organizations at all levels of society, from the individual to multinational corporations. While it is crucial to promote sustainable manufacturing procedures in industry, it is equally important to support individuals and families in making their everyday lives more sustainable. ICT could support this in many different ways, for instance by presenting environmental data to increase awareness and helping people network to share resources and facilities. However, fully addressing sustainability will likely require not only engineering advances but also technology design that addresses the complex cultural, social, and lifestyle factors implicated in technology use and its effects. Combining 'sustainable HCI' and 'third-wave HCI' approaches, this project will contribute to a better understanding of the sociocultural factors in family everyday life that influence environmental sustainability issues. It will also present pragmatic ICT based designs that will encourage families to choose a more sustainable lifestyle. The grant covers about one year of postdoctoral studies, with a planned start in June 2011.

Kristina Höök will continue her work as one of the advisors to the Swedish governement and discuss the future Swedish ICT and telecom in the newly funded IT delegation with the IT minister Anna-Karin Hatt. The delegation consists of 26 experts from industry, research and governance. Read more in Computer Sweden. 

Open seminar with Nathalie Peira on Wednesday, Feb 23rd, 11:00, in Kista Mobile Showcase. Title: "Emotion regulation with  iofeedback: effects on regulation strategies and brain activity"

Emotion regulation with biofeedback: effects on regulation strategies and brain activity

Abstract: Anxiety and mood disorders may in part be related to a problem of using efficient emotion regulation strategies, and result from a dysfunction in the prefrontal-amygdala network. Individuals with anxiety related disorders show hypervigilance towards physiological reactions, dysfunctional cognitive appraisal of these body manifestations, and a preference for regulating emotions by means of suppression, which does not decrease the physiological response. In this context, the use of biofeedback combined with fMRI brain-imaging stands as a promising approach to untangle how biofeedback contributes to regulation of physiological emotion reactions, improvement of emotion regulation strategies, and changes in the amygdala-prefrontal activity. The project includes a behavioral and an fMRI study with the specific research questions: 1-What are the effects of biofeedback on emotional experience, physiological responses to emotional stimuli, and emotion regulation strategies? 2- How does biofeedback change the activity in the amygdala-prefrontal network? 3- What are the learning-effects of biofeedback on emotion regulation strategies, emotional experience, and physiological responses to emotional stimuli? The predicted results are that biofeedback decrease emotional experience, physiological responses, amygdala and insular activity together with an activation of the prefrontal and the anterior cingulate cortex. These effects are predicted to be learnt and remain after training.

Sara Ljungblad has received funding from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond RJ (an independent foundation at the Swedish central bank) to do a full-time  three year project on experience centred design and related design methods. The project is done in collaboration with LOTS Design, a design firm in Gotheburg that is conducting industrial design and strategic design.  The project has the title "Understanding future users: Qualities in consumer and professional context", and will investigate how qualities associated to consumer products, services and practices can be understood, described and transferred into a professional context to improve work-related design. The project starts on March 1, 2011.

Kristina Höök was once more elected as one of the most powerful IT women by the magazin Computer Sweden.

Kristina Höök is invited speaker when VINNOVA and the Swedish Research councils, VR, FAS and Formas, celebrates their 10 year anniversary. She will talk about her research and the Mobile Life VINN Excellence centre as a good example of research environment. The event takes place at Clarion Hotel Sign hotel in Stockholm, January 18th.